1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pedal bracket assembly for use in a motor vehicle and a method of installing such a pedal bracket assembly on a structural body. More particularly, the present invention relates to a pedal bracket assembly which is robust enough to accurately bear both a large operating load and a delicate or small operating load applied by the motor vehicle driver and a method of installing such a pedal bracket assembly on a structural body.
2. Description of the Relevant Art
Pedals such as clutch and brake pedals in motor vehicles are foot-operated and normally subject to large operating foot loads.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 60 (1985)-135329, for example, discloses a structure by which such a pedal for bearing large loads is supported on a vehicle body. In the disclosed structure, a pedal bracket having two parallel side walls is fixed to a panel, or a horizontal member of a panel, which separates an engine compartment from a passenger's compartment and which constitutes a structural body of the vehicle. The side walls of the pedal bracket support a transverse pin extending therebetween. The pedal is supported on the lower end of an arm, while the upper end of the arm is angularly movably mounted on the transverse pin.
A structural body of a vehicle includes vertical and transverse members and is generally formed by either bending a single metallic sheet through a certain angle to provide such vertical and transverse members, or producing separate members and integrally welding or otherwise joining them as vertical and transverse members. The structural body is, therefore, prone to errors arising from the bending process when the metallic sheet is bent into the vertical and transverse members, or from dimensional errors of the separate members and the welding process when the separate members are integrally joined. The pedal is coupled to the push rod of a master cylinder disposed in the engine compartment on one side of the vertical member remotely from the pedal. The push rod extends through the vertical member and is pivotally coupled to an intermediate front edge of the pedal arm. Where the pedal bracket is mounted on an erroneously formed structural body, as described above, the pedal which is angularly mounted on the bracket is significantly affected by the errors of the structural body in that the push rod extending from the master cylinder and the pedal arm are highly likely to be displaced out of mutual alignment.
Conventionally, to allow the pedal arm to be held in accurate alignment with the push rod for proper connection with each other, the vertical and transverse members of the structural body must be bent or separately formed highly accurately, and must be installed in place with high accuracy. However, such high accuracy is undesirably expensive to achieve, often prohibitively so.
The pedals mounted on vehicle structural bodies are, therefore, normally displaced from desired positions on account of dimensional variations of the structural bodies. In the art, there is demand for a rugged pedal bracket structure, assembly, or mechanism which has a required degree of accuracy and is capable of accurately bearing both a large operating load and a delicate or small operating load applied by the motor vehicle driver, irrespective of the accuracy of a structural body on which the pedal bracket assembly is mounted.